


i do not want to bring the fire home

by isometric



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Closure, Gen, hover text translation, mentions of giving donny kowalski a home, mentions of internment camps, mentions of xenophobia and sinophobia, summary hyperlink directs to collins dictionary definition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:40:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28990122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isometric/pseuds/isometric
Summary: “后悔,” the captain says, and she thinks,me too.
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor & Captain Zao
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	i do not want to bring the fire home

**Author's Note:**

> Title cobbled from two of Zao’s lines: "I have no wish to bring weapons back home. I leave the fire here."
> 
> The work is written so that a non-speaker could guess at the original phrases without translation. I recommend doing so, though translations are provided should you need them.
> 
> The workskin is based on [How To Change Text on AO3 When the Cursor is Hovering Over It (Or Clicked on Mobile)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10957056) by [La_Temperanza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/La_Temperanza/pseuds/La_Temperanza). The hyperlink in the summary leads to a dictionary definition, while all of the "hyperlink" text within the fic are hover text translations.

It’s a lie she tells herself that she never believes.

But practice makes perfect; practicing the accent, perfecting the mannerism. She rehearses the lines till they become the only reality she’s ever known. And for years, that works.

Then she meets the captain.

“I watched you talk to a boy on the dock,” he says, “swim out here.”

Her eyes well up. She knows that accent. The shape of those eyes. The flat of those cheeks, even with withered flesh and missing skin.

She knows the ghoul in front of her, even if she doesn’t know him.

“You appear… able. But not a threat? No. Coming in 和平?

“和平?”

“Ah,” he says, and his eyes dart like he’s trying to remember. “Peace?”

It’s been so long.

It’s been so long. Two hundred years, and longer.

She moves slowly, takes off her helmet. “对. 和平.”

The way his eyes widen is so familiar. “你... 你也是—?”

“Yes.” Two hundred and twenty-two years. “But, I haven’t spoken—”

“I understand.”

And they stare at each other. The language returns to her, like it was never really gone. Over two hundred years she hasn’t heard her mother tongue, never met another speaker. The twelve years she spent hiding, always pretending to be someone else. And now, in the post-apocalypse, no one to hide from anymore. No one to speak with anymore.

They sit and talk. Over two hundred years, and despite the remains of Sanctuary Hills, it’s finally like coming home. They talk of the past, of the ruined new world.

“How did you,” he starts, and cuts off.

“이,” she says, and he nods at that.

“李.”

They continue from there. He talks about life in rural China, the four younger siblings he left behind when he enlisted to get extra ration tickets. The lessons in English, in case they intercepted American messages. How he met his best friend; how lucky he was to find him again as his first mate.

He asks how she avoided internment camps, and she tells him about the insider family friend who changed all her documents. About becoming Nora Lee, daughter to American-born children of naturalized Korean immigrants, who would one day survive the Great War through unexpected cryogenesis.

“Your husband—”

“Doesn’t know. Didn’t know.” She remembers, the knot tugging inside her lungs, Nate asking; the relief on his face when she snapped back, _장난하냐_.

No one knew. After the family friend took her in, age sixteen, she never spoke Chinese again. And for twelve years, the ruse worked, even if she had to let go of her family for it.

“家人,” the captain repeats. “I... am deeply sorry. It is my fault. I was the one who launched all of the nuclear missiles on 杨子. 真的是对不起你.”

“I forgive you.” She can only smile ruefully at the situation. “I married a soldier. I understand.”

And back it goes. The arguments she and Nate had about war, morality; how grateful she was to Shaun, when Nate finally agreed to retire to civilian life. How she can’t hate the man before her for destroying the life she’d fought for. She understood what she signed up for, knew the sacrifice she had to make of righteousness, even if Nate didn’t. War takes so many things. Everything she’d lost, she’d lost them once before.

The nukes from 杨子 destroyed her life. She will never have closure for the families and friends lost to the fire. She can never forget the neighbours left behind in Sanctuary Hills, begging to be let into the vault, or the guards striving to preserve order, not knowing what awaited their duty. But now her sole focus is Shaun—and it's not the captain who took her baby from her, raised him to lack so thoroughly in compassion and ethics.

It’s not the captain who started the war either. He had nothing to do with its inception. He had nothing to do with the vicious racism and xenophobia, the resulting internment camps—no, the resulting concentration camps. He may have hated capitalism and its adherents, but he was indoctrinated into that hate, just as her peers were indoctrinated into hating communists, into victim-blaming the Canadians. She can't blame him for any of that.

Not when she never blamed Nate once for the same.

She can’t blame the captain for anything anymore. The Old World is gone, and everyone they knew and loved with it. Regret lingers between them, but the world’s already moved on. They can’t mourn forever.

Both of them have looked back for too long. It’s time to move forward, regardless of whether they think they deserve to. Regardless of whether there is anything left to look forward, because as long as they’re alive, there are things they can do to help. When she tells him so, for the first time since they began speaking, she sees his eyes tear up.

So, the conversation turns to the present. Where they want to go from there. What they hope from the future. She invites him back to shore, to stay at Sanctuary Hills, perhaps meet Dr. Li, the only person of Chinese descent she’s met since waking up—but the captain declines. 杨子 is grounded from a mine struck two hundred years earlier, but the captain’s kept her systems operational all this time, and doesn’t want to leave her behind.

He doesn’t want to leave his crew behind. Nora listens to him speak, watches his face twist with guilt. To take her offer is to turn his back on his crew. To forget the people who’d trusted him, whom he had taken for granted. Feral as they are, they are still his crew; even now, a hundred and fifty years since becoming feral, they still recognize him, still trust him. He’s hurt them enough already.

And on shore, there are no familiar faces.

The captain wants to return to his homeland, and despite the sense of loss she feels hearing the admission, she knows it’s the only option. There is nothing more he can do for the Commonwealth. There will be no reparations for the survivors of his missiles, but she can’t begrudge him his chance at closure. And, no matter how she feels about it, her grandparents, along with the uncles and aunts she never had the chance to meet, had once called his country home, too.

In the end, she only asks him what she can do to help. First order of business is a couple dampening coils, and she laughs out loud as he lays out his wartime intelligence. The captain responds as expected, nagging irritably about danger and caution like he is an uncle or an older family friend, never mind that she’d survived the war and the Commonwealth just as he had. She explains that Saugus has been safe for almost a year now, as has the surrounding area, ever since she and the Minutemen cleared it out.

“真幸运,” he says, when she tells him that. “Fortune favours us both, it seems.”

Still, she doesn’t dare remove the coils, not when the blast furnace is still in use by residents of the Slog. Instead, she offers to go back to the Institute and ask them to replicate what they need.

“It will take some time,” she says, “but I will get you the coils. What will you do in the meantime?”

“I will work on repairing the bridge control system,” he says. He casts a weary glance to the system in question. “There is much work to be done.”

They work up a list for what needs to be done. They will have to get nuclear fuel from somewhere, and prepare the reactor for the fuel. The captain wants to use up the remaining warhead, but with the rest of the crew clustered around it, getting _to_ the warhead is a problem.

“I cannot kill them,” the captain says. “They are my crew. My family. 家人, all of us. But you must do what you must do.”

What can she say to that? To his conviction that penance is suffering, that there is no such thing as absolution, only never-ending atonement?

Still, guilt can only go so far. Her adoptive mother had spent ten years teaching her that lesson.

“What will you do once 杨子 is fixed?” she asks.

“Return home, where I belong,” he replies. If he wonders why she asks him this a second time, he doesn’t mention it.

“And what will you do there?”

“Anything I can do. If China is gone, I will build. House by house. And if no houses can be built—” There, he cuts himself, thousands of years’ worth of etiquette and superstition preventing him from continuing. But she understands his meaning.

“Then as captain, you should bring all your crew home.” He looks at her, face creased in weariness. She takes his hands, gently, slowly. “They are your family. For them, you must do what you must do.”

To venture below is to pass a death sentence: either she falls to the crew, or she kills them all. To send in anyone other than a ghoul is impossible, and yet, she can’t in good conscience send in another ghoul to soak in the rads and risk becoming feral. Even if the captain needs to prepare the reactor, there is no reason the two tasks must be done at the same time, or that someone else can't do the job. Synths resistant to radiation, for example.

It takes a bit of convincing before the captain acquiesces to that line of reasoning. She doesn’t want to kill any more people than she has to. She doesn’t want to separate him from his family. After two hundred years, she’d like a happy ending for a change. She has to leave soon after, take a break from the radioactivity within the sub, but she promises to come back within a week, if only to visit him.

Back on the surface, the cool ocean breeze is a relief after the stifling heat of the submarine. She takes her time breathing in the fresh air, settled safely on the roof of the dock house, watching the noon sunlight play on the waterfront. Donny Kowalski is long gone by then, spirited away under Nick’s watchful eyes to Goodneighbor, the closest settlement, just waiting for her to rejoin them.

A child like him isn't suited for the toughness of Goodneighbor either, of course. But then, there's the question of where to bring him. Sanctuary Hills would be best, but Donny seems like he'd miss the waterfront, would probably want to stay as close to his old house and his father's grave as possible.

It brings back to mind the looming uncertainty of the future. For her, for Donny, and for the captain—all three of them, tied down by the past, now forced to move and confront what lies before them.

Nora lies back against the roof, out of sight of the captain’s periscope, and throws one arm over her eyes to block out the sun. The Directorate is still waiting on her answer. Shaun's patiently given her a week to think it over, despite the cancer and the anxiety that must be eating at him. And now the clock’s started clicking, time running out.

She’d run from the decision by walking all over the remains of the city, blanketed in Nick's silent understanding, revisiting ghosts that only exist within her memories now. The crowded apartments of Chinatown she grew up in, where everyone was a relative, even the ones who weren’t. The house by the Reservoir, where she'd finished to transition to adulthood under her adoptive mother. The little apartment she’d rented during college, then law school, with its thin walls and nosy, well-meaning neighbours. The BPL, where she’d met Nate, him opening an account, her returning her research material. The food stalls in Faneuil Hall, where Nate had taken her for their first date, after an invigorating walk around the Boston Commons; the little Italian place by the harbour, where she had taken him for their second date, to watch the New Year's fireworks on the docks.

And by the docks, Donny Kowalski, speaking of lost family, sea monsters. The large eye that is 杨子’s periscope. Family monsters: the captain, forever grieving; Nate and Shaun, who she’s lost, and will lose; nebulous China, that she’d only ever heard of in wistful tones, then in fearful whispers, and now in guilty and homesick inflections.

The captain had agreed to let her make use of his remaining missiles. _I have no wish to bring the weapons back home_ , he’d said. Had apologized, over and over again, for the fire he’d caused, for asking to leave the fire here. And she’d thought, almost in a daze, that she was instead the one bringing the fire home.

Thinking that, this time, maybe she could tame the fire, use it to help for a change. To do so, she needs to help the captain; to help the captain, she has to return to the Institute and give her answer. She'll have to go back to those nauseatingly clean, clinical white walls; she’ll have to endure their elitism and chauvinism, their rejection of compassion, their embracing of eugenics. Everything that disgusted her about the Old World only found new home in the Institute, but within that den lies the hope of rebuilding the Commonwealth.

To face the future is to accept its obstacles too. She’s already agreed to help the captain see things to the end. She’ll have to wrest control of the Directorate somehow, one way or another, will have to do something about the increasingly belligerent leaders of the Brotherhood and the Railroad. How long does it take to undo generational brainwashing? How long before the three factions devolve into open warfare? How long until the Commonwealth can stand up on its own feet again?

Still, simply worrying leads nowhere. Over two hundred years she’d hid, dreading the inevitable. And now the inevitable’s passed, and here she is, alive despite it all. Despite all her regrets, her grief, the horror at this broken world. The captain and her, long after the end of the world, connecting over opposing allegiances, finding ways to assist each other, sharing in a language she never thought she’d hear again.

No matter her fears and reservations, things can’t stay as they are. Someone has to change the Institute from within. Someone has to help the residents of the Commonwealth. Someone has to give Donny a good home. It shouldn’t have to be her, but she’s no longer alone. So many people rely on her, but she doesn’t have to face everything on her own.

Nora takes a breath, and another. Takes in the breeze, the smell of the ocean. Then she gets up, plots the fastest way to Goodneighbor, and gets back to work. 

**Author's Note:**

> The fact that you can’t bring Donny back to Sanctuary Hills is absolute bullshit. We’re just supposed to let him stay by himself, with only fish for food, in an area infested with mirelurks? Not on my watch! Anyways...
> 
> At first I really debated adding the translations. The original game did not, and some of Zao's lines are lifted straight from the script. However, in the end, for the sake of transparency and open communication, I decided to translate it all the same. I decided not to romanize the Chinese and Korean words, in part as respect to those two languages, and also to add to that feeling of alienation I felt when playing the game.
> 
> In particular, I want to make a point about the submarine's name. 扬子 is properly romanized as _yángzǐ_ under the pīnyīn system; Bethesda's insistence on Yangtze instead is understandable but tiresome. I know it's a reference to the river. I know people outside of Mainland China use Wade-Giles romanization (Zao, however, is representative of Mainland China anyways, which formally uses pīnyīn). None of that makes it any less grating.
> 
> Fallout 4 is very....interesting, in a way, in that the developers never seemed to realize that Chinese people, diaspora or otherwise, might be interested in playing the game from their own point of view. Cue all of the anti-communist and anti-Chinese language, and the Sole Survivor never gets the chance to even dispute that or tell them to knock it off. And it's not like F4 _doesn't_ have folks of Chinese descent. It would have been really interesting for an East Asian Survivor to have special scenes/dialogue with Zao, though I understand why this particular suggestion might not be implementable.
> 
> The events my Nora went through is meant to reflect the real life Japanese Internment Camps that were put in place during WW2. Likewise, the efforts of Nate (and others of Korean and Japanese descent in this universe) to distance themselves from Chinese citizens/immigrants are meant to reflect the way real life Chinese and Korean citizens/immigrants tried to distance themselves from their Japanese peers. The discussion around terminology, of internment vs concentration camp, is also one that continues to this day, though general consensus amongst actual Japanese-Americans favours the latter word.
> 
> Zao enlisting for extra ration tickets is based in real life as well. In 60s-70s China, people who joined the military, whether they joined as soldiers or not, could get ration tickets for both food and nonfood items (usually passed on to their families and in-laws) on top of being fed and clothed for free. This was during a time when people still routinely starved to death.
> 
> This fic (and my attempt at humanizing Zao) isn't meant to excuse the things Zao did. There is definitely a conversation to be had about war crimes and the things Zao and people like him did, but I simply wanted to explore what reconnecting with your suppressed heritage vis-à-vis the person responsible for the destruction of your home would be like. My Nora is not all-forgiving, but she is tired and homesick, and has been kicking around the Commonwealth long enough to want to move on.
> 
> Language Trivia:
> 
>   * Asides from the fact that Bethesda clearly has no idea how to properly write a bilingual character, Zao’s pronounciation is off for quite a lot of his Chinese lines. It was really funny to listen to. Ruined the somber atmosphere somewhat.
>   * 对不起 (I'm sorry) is a standard —if somewhat formal— way of apologizing, but it can also be used to convey deep regret for something you are personally responsible for, because it literally means "I cannot face you" (as in, I do not have the right to face you after what I've done). So Zao apologizing using this way is also him taking responsibility for the nukes, acknowledging the pain he personally caused, in a more formal and remorseful manner than in-game. It's quite unfortunate that this doesn't translate well in English.
>   * Suicide (and frank discussions of death in general) is considered taboo. Suicide, in particular, is historically considered the greatest wrong you could do not only to yourself, but also your family and especially to your parents. Ritualistic suicide in the past was only done as penance/punishment for severe crimes, or as a very extreme form of protest. Zao choosing this as a final punishment is appropriate in context of cultural history and as a result of grief/guilt, but he would not speak of it so frankly, at least not without using euphemisms.
> 



End file.
